Ordering Custom Challenge Coins: Useful Tips and Smart Practices

Boosting morale and fostering camaraderie amongst members of a team are incredibly important. Having custom challenge coins made for your group is a great way to achieve this. These tangible mementos of what your team stands for and your loyalty to one another will go a long way towards cultivating a healthy and productive group dynamic. You can give these away after your team completes a significant task or accomplishment, or when new members are officially admitted into your group as a gesture that is sure to be genuinely appreciated and taken to heart. Having these coins will also be a handy way of deciding whose turn it is to buy a round of drinks on your next night out.

There are many companies that specialize in the minting of custom challenge coins, and it is not difficult to find them. A quick internet search will yield numerous results, and it will be easy to find out which ones do good work by going through reviews and feedback left by former customers on independent websites. As with most customized products these days, challenge coins can conveniently be ordered online, so you don’t even have to deal with the trouble of leaving your home or office to get them.

What may not be so straightforward is the process of ordering itself.

Having personalized coins made is rather different from creating items such as badges, t-shirts or even mugs. The words and shapes on custom challenge coins are either stamped or engraved onto the metal surface rather than simply being printed on, and you will need to plan the design accordingly.

A customized coin can contain a staggering amount of detail, but the nature of their construction makes errors much more obvious and much harder to correct. You don’t want to open a newly-delivered box of challenge coins only to find out that they all contain a mistake that could have been avoided if a clearer image had been provided. You should make sure that the images you pass on to the minting company are of the highest possible quality to avoid mistakes caused by blurred letters or unseen lines. The minimum image resolution for this purpose is usually 300 dpi (dots per inch).

Another point about design that you should keep in mind is that while almost any colors can be put on a challenge coin, they can only occur in solid blocks. This is because colors are applied by filling some depressed spaces on the coin with hard enamel paint. This is not a medium that readily lends itself to being blended into subtle gradations of color, especially if it needs to be put on a large number of coins. If the image you want on your coins has any subtle shading, you might need to enlist the help of the minting company’s designers to work out an alternative.

You will also need to consider the manner in which the coins will be presented – after all, you can’t just hand them to people straight out of the box. A good minting company will give you options suitable for a variety of occasions, from elegant pouches that you can use for event giveaways to formal frames and cases that the recipients can proudly display in their home or place of work.

When you place your order for custom challenge coins, be aware that their production takes time. The coins need to be stamped, plated and colored before they are ready to go, so don’t expect for it to be possible for your coins to get to you in just one day, or even a week. A fast delivery for challenge coins is one that takes place 10 days after you’ve finalized your transaction with the minting company, so be sure not to place yourself in a bind by ordering your coins too close to the date by which you’ll need them.